Suburbia
by Sullen Siren
Summary: A short story inspired by the Matthew Good Band song Suburbia.  Two people confront each other and themselves in a town that's become hell.  Dark and dreary, you've been warned.  Reviews welcomed.


Author's Note: This is not part of **In Twilight's Wake**. This story is a little scenario that popped into my head while I was TRYING to work on Twilight, and would NOT go away. This song came on, and the story just came into my mind. I very rarely read songfics, and have never written one. This one doesn't follow the song very closely, it's just inspired by it. The band is the Canadian band Matthew Good Band, who've just had their album Beautiful Midnight released in the US. The first single, Hello Timebomb is being played on some alternative type stations. It's a great album and if you've never listened to them, you should hop over to http://www.matthewgoodband.com and check it out. As for the story, it's dark and dreary and short. I tried to do it with no dialogue, which is how I wanted it, but it wasn't working, so I just tried to keep it to a minimum. I didn't want to bother my new beta reader right off with an unrelated story, so this isn't edited and may well have some boo boos and errors. Feel free to r/r if you like it, or even if you didn't. As always, e-mails are welcome. 

##### 

**Suburbia**

###### Matthew Good Band

  
  


###### You will come back within yourself,

###### you can be art when we melt,

###### and I will know what you were for.

###### I say we're leaving

###### there ain't nothing here at all

###### another day, a week, the mall.

###### And baby if I was in demand

###### you would be mine.

  
  


###### Someday this place is going to burn

###### is your whole life in there waiting?

###### Someday your head is going to turn and you'll realize

###### I'm missing. Do you realize?

  
  


###### You will come back

###### convince yourself you can stay alive

###### and wait for me.

###### And I will know what this was for

###### and I'll say we're leaving.

###### There ain't nothing here at all

###### another month, a year that's all.

###### So you can tell them I'm coming

###### and hell's coming with me.

  
  


###### Someday this place is going to burn

###### is your whole life in there waiting?

###### Someday their heads are going to turn and they'll realize

###### you're missing.

###### We are there.

  
  
  
  


The streets were bleeding. No metaphoric imaginary blood, it bubbled up groaning and churning in a flood of horrific scarlet beauty from the sewers and ran in great gushing streams from sinks and bathtubs, spilling through the front doors of newly empty suburban homes to bath the streets. The blood soaked black top and red-tinted front lawns were littered with bodies. This place, so recently a home to so many, had become hell on earth. 

They stood huddled together, herding masses of screaming wide-eyed people toward city exits. The people who had been too blind to see the darkness within their own town were now faced with something they couldn't understand, and now they stampeded like frightened cattle, crushing those weak enough to fall before their panicked strength. Only this small island of people stood firm against them as the blood lapped at their feet and the city went up in flames around them. Those who had not been blind, who had always been forced to see what no one else had been willing to see. The mouth of hell had opened too many times for them to count, and always they had sewn it closed again. This time, they had been too slow, and hell had belched forth it's contents over this place. Their efforts had saved the rest of the world, but Sunnydale was lost. Demons roamed the streets and vampires drank greedily from the bleeding taps. For Buffy Summers and those who had, for so long, worked with her against the evil beneath this town, the scent of blood and burning was the smell of failure. She had failed, and everything she had worked for burned with the town she'd protected. 

The traffic in the streets began to die away as the town grew empty of honest citizens. The time for them too to flee was rapidly approaching. Buffy glanced about and suddenly realized who was missing. She forced the others to go ahead as she waded back into the burning town to find him. 

She knew where he was. It took only minutes to return there, to stand again at the mouth of hell and feel the pain it's presence caused. He stood staring into the cracked floor where so recently a hole had gaped open and spewed forth it's contents, his dark eyes awash with tears and his tall frame bent by the weight of sorrows no man should be asked to bear. And no one had asked him to bear them. He had taken them onto himself unasked. 

He knew she was there. He felt her with every nerve, familiar and alien at the same time. When finally he looked toward her, his sorrow grew as he saw the stranger that looked back at him from her eyes. She swept toward him with the feral grace that was so much a part of her and pulled him away from the crack in the floor. He yanked his arm away roughly. She stopped and stared at him. "You can't stay here. You'll die." 

"I should be dead already." 

"How can you say that to me?" 

He studied her, his expression dead, the light in his eyes gone. "You left them here to die. You pulled us away, you fought the way out for us, and you LEFT THEM. I should have been here. We all should have. We should have been here, fighting, trying while you freed them. That's the way it works. The hero's don't save themselves and leave the victims behind." 

She saw what he wanted. Affirmation, hope, love, belief, he wanted to look at her and see a hero so that he could look at himself and see the same thing. She couldn't give that to him, not anymore. "You're not a hero and neither am I." 

He was broken. "Then we're the villains." 

She wanted to cry, but felt as if she'd forgotten how. "No. We're neither. We're the strongest. We are the floodgates that hold back the tide, we are necessary. They were expendable." 

He stared at the bodies that lay at broken angles in the corner. "And so am I." 

She stared wordlessly, wondering how he could possibly think that. "No. You're not. You're irreplaceable and priceless. You're the hope that keeps me going. You're the heart of what I am." 

He laughed bitterly. "Do you think that there wasn't someone who felt that way about them?" He waved his hand toward the littered corpses. "Do you think they weren't the light in someone else's darkness? Do you think they would have laid down and happily died to save the Slayer's little friend? You're job is to protect them. To help them. To be their shield and protector. I was something special because I helped you do that. My life had MEANING because I was part of this amazing woman who stood for the all that was right in the world." He turned to her, his gaze utterly empty. "And now I watched as you saved your friends and left innocents behind to die. I watched as you put yourself and your loves above those of others. And I let you. I stood back and I LET you. And they died, and I lived." He turned away to stare again at the charred and cracked ground. "I don't know who you are anymore Buffy. The girl I followed so blindly is gone. In her place is a woman who gave up humanity for control. You are justice without mercy. And I can't look at you without missing the girl you were." He was silent for a long moment. "And I can't look at myself without hating myself for letting it go this far." He gave her a long look, and then he left without a word. No goodbye, no apology, no familiar smile. He was just gone. 

She walked back through the darkening streets like a ghost. Drifting aimlessly and disembodied through the streets. The roar and glow of the fires seemed distant to her. She walked and she waited. She waited for him to come back. But he didn't. She passed window and looked at her own reflection, backlit in an eerie glow by the flames. She saw a version of herself she didn't recognize looking back. Soulless eyes stared back. She saw it then in herself, saw what she had become. She saw the power and control of the First Slayer looking back and realized how far she'd sunk into her own power. And she didn't care. Sorrow for her state was gone, even her love of her friends was habit and a shade of what she'd once felt. She was missing, and the creature in her place was a slayer before she was a human. 

Buffy Summers heard the roar of oncoming flames and turned to see a wall of fire reaching for her with long windblown fingers. She looked behind her one more time. Looking for her heart. He wasn't there. Without him, she would never be anything more than the Slayer. And the last remaining vestiges of the girl who'd laughed and gossiped and shopped and cried pushed away the survival instincts of the slayer. All she was had burned with this town, there was nothing left to save. Let another come and take her place. She opened her arms and waited for the flames.   
  



End file.
